The first time I remember hearing about Seneca Falls was when I was in college.

I guess it's possible that I encountered mention of the first women's rights convention sometime during my high school years. But if I did, it was so fleeting that it didn't even register.

It was a very different story when the subject came up during my Women's History class at Stonehill College. First, there was the fact that there was actually a course devoted to the history of women. Before the Women's Lib movement of the 1960s, major textbook publishers apparently saw no good reason to devote any amount of space or time to what women had accomplished.

Even though women had already accomplished a lot.

Thankfully, by my college years in the early 1970s, the tide had turned at least a little and at Stonehill, I was fortunate to have a terrific professor by the name of Dr. Jim Kenneally. Dr. Kenneally was passionate about history — including women's history — and in one semester, he taught me everything I never knew about our long-standing battle for equality.

One of the things I learned about was Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the driving forces behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, a watershed moment in the fight for women's rights.

If not for the lead of these two pioneering feminists, women might still not have the right to vote. They got us on the path — even though it took another 70-plus years.

What again brought Seneca Falls front and center for me was the mention President Barack Obama made in his inaugural address on Monday: "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls ...," he said, also giving a shout-out to Selma and Stonewall, battlefields for civil and gay rights.

At home, on a day off, I savored the opportunity to listen to his words, intently and uninterrupted. While there was nothing that did not resonate, what spoke to me most deeply and personally was what came next — and also drew some of the loudest applause.

"It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began," the president said. "For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts ..."

Which begs this question: How can it be that in a country where women have risen to the heights of countless professions and have unflinchingly met the greatest of challenges, such inequity continues to exist?

And, more important, what will it take — and how long will it take — to finally close the gap?

I am glad that with the world watching and listening, President Barack Obama said what he did. I just hate the fact that, in 2013, he still has to say it.